Earlier this month, you heard from fishers and tour guides about the Resilient Bold Belize project, which seeks to put 20% of Belize's marine space under protection. Stakeholders held a press conference stating that they utilize those areas for their livelihoods and if the project happens, they will not even be able to catch and release.
But earlier this week the PM was not moved. He said that they have to protect the marine space and there are international obligations to meet.
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Some fishers are expressing some concerns and rightly so and we are listening to them but we need to be able to try to put some kind of protection. I know that we can't wait a year or a month to put food on the table but if we eat everything we have today, tomorrow we don't have any. And what these protected areas do, a number of things, one is to protect the marine life and the fish, and the conchs and everything else and that it will have more, not too far away, positive effects for us. I can tell you when we did the marine reserve in Port of Honduras down south, I remember the late Mike Espat was upset, he said oh but the people will not be able to fish down there. And as we explained to him back then we said but the fish grow, they don't stay there, then they go out of that area. Then you could get bigger fish and now people are seeing the benefits of that. Glover's reef, I was down there, I think it was earlier this year and it was one of the guides, we were in a boat, he said, you see right here, this area, we mind this because if we see any boat that doesn't belong here, we call coast guard, we call fisheries department, there's a boat that does not belong there because now that we have this area under protection, outside of this area, we have bigger fish, bigger conchs, bigger lobster, so there's some benefits so we need to listen to their concerns, we need to sit down and show them the science behind these decisions and also to point out that we also have an international obligation under the blue bond so I believe with discussions we can find a common ground to be able to move this forward."
